I rlly like ur insight on this! I feel like these characters are overhated. I get that the plotline is sort of regurgitated and appears to be the typical Cinderella story, but I feel as though there’s a lot more depth to each character than people give credit for. like I’m not a huge fan of matthias, I feel like he’s sort of bland in terms of personality, but he is very intelligent and calculating with how he executes his plans.. and I feel like people just hate on layla because she isn’t a badass femme fatale.. when it’s more realistic for someone who went through so much abandonment in her life, she feels like she has no other choice but to choose matthias in the end.. plus, we have literally seen her have a backbone against matthias.. like are we forgetting that women were treated as less thans back then? even now, it’s very difficult for a girl with barely any family left, a lot of emotional baggage, and coming from poverty to work around someone has powerful as a DUKE. and I love Claudine’s character because her ambition and goal actually makes sense.. she isn’t petty for no reason, nor does she despise layla for capturing the duke’s attention… she just deems her as a threat to her future title as a duchess which makes complete sense.. like I actually really sympathize with her character and like her as an antagonist (she isn’t a villainess in my eyes).
As someone who has read the novel numerous times, I realized that a lot of the main characters are victims to their social class. For Matthias, he's a victim of a society that expects him to be perfect in everything he does, his feelings for Leyla are viewed as a moment of folly even by him in the initial stages. He's from a social class where love is frowned upon and viewed as a weakness and as such, he himself was never really taught that type of emotional love between lovers which breeds his own twisted sense of love for Leya in the early parts of their relationship.
For Leyla, she's a victim of her past where her fears of abandonment drives her to cling to them even if it's not what she wants. Case in point, her engagement to Kyle, she loves him as a friend and didn't want to lose his friendship if she rejected his proposal so even tho her heart wasn't in it, she accepted it because she feared losing him as a friend and for her that would feel like being abandoned. And we see this in the choices she makes when it comes to Bill. She's also trapped by the choices of her mother in the past which has led to her struggle in agreeing and maintaining a relationship with Matthias.
For Claudine, she is a victim of a society that deems her not a suitable heir because she is a woman and as such she resolves to strengthen herself even if it means using someone to do it.